After all, we nod, why shouldn’t the same “10x thinking” that helped Google tame the Web, earn a vast fortune on keyword-based ads, and build the world’s leading mobile operating system allow it to solve other pressing problems, like, say, death? “Oh great, Google is on the case!” we say. “I guess we can just sit back and wait for those robot chauffeurs and longevity pills.”

I certainly applaud Google’s boldness—at least they’re using their billions for something other than just making more billions. But Calico, the Google-founded company that will reportedly develop new technologies to tackle aging and age-related illness, already shows hallmarks of what scholar Evgeny Morozov has called “technological solutionism”—the idea that there’s no problem so large that it can’t be solved with enough data and processors.

“I have some knowledge of [anti-aging technology], just being in Silicon Valley,” Google CEO Larry Page told Time in an exclusive interview published this week. Curing cancer, Page said, is “not as big an advance as you might think”—the implication being that Calico means to think even bigger.

What worries me every time I hear about another “moon shot” project like Calico is that the resulting media coverage will reinforce the hero worship that already surrounds companies like Google, Apple, and Facebook, and make us complacent about the future. Too often, the fixation on what’s coming next from these companies draws our attention away from the simpler things that can be done to make the world better right now.

Did you know, for example, that an inexpensive blue-LED phototherapy light developed by a San Francisco non-profit called D-Rev has been used to treat more than 7,000 infants born with jaundice, saving 142 babies from death or disability? That’s Silicon Valley innovation at work too—but because it’s not about apps or big data, you aren’t going to read about it in TechCrunch.

The truth is that if we want to live longer as individuals, or improve life expectancy across the human population, there are plenty of low-tech, low-cost health strategies that yield big rewards. We don’t need to wait years while Arthur Levinson, the chairman of Genentech and Apple and now the CEO of Calico, starts putting Google’s money to work. Here are 10 things consumers, citizens, elected leaders, and medical providers can do right now to boost life expectancy:

1. Support Improvements in Maternal and Prenatal Care

The absolute best way to raise the average lifespan of a country’s population is to reduce the number of infants who die from preventable causes. That’s a complex problem, but two good ways to fix high infant mortality rates in the U.S. (we’re a shocking 27th in the world rankings) would be to improve overall care for women, especially those with chronic conditions like diabetes and obesity, and expand access to prenatal care for pregnant women. More smoking-cessation programs for pregnant moms would be another big boost. There’s also some research showing that scheduling C-sections later, when possible, would reduce the rate of complications due to pre-term birth.

2. Vaccinate Yourself and Your Children

It’s a crime that Jenny McCarthy has been allowed to continue her ill-informed crusade to warn parents about a non-existent link between vaccines and autism. (And shame on ABC for giving her an even louder megaphone.) The truth is that the declining rate of death from infectious disease—almost entirely due to the arrival of vaccinations and better sanitation in the 20th century—is one of the biggest contributors to growing lifespans globally. The risk of side effects from vaccinations is tiny compared to the risks of catching a condition like measles, which killed 2.6 million children every year before vaccination became routine.

3. Stay Out of the Hospital

I’m not joking. The gruesome truth is that 1 in 10 people admitted to U.S. hospitals get a new infection while they’re there; these nasty, often antibiotic-resistant bugs kill 100,000 hospital patients every year. If you have to go to a hospital, it pays to look for one with low infection rates (25 states now require hospitals to report rates of common infections). Smart hospitals are fighting bacteria like staph and C. difficile by doing basic things like cleaning rooms more carefully, following checklists, and enforcing hygiene standards like hand-washing.

4. Take Your Medicines As Directed

Deaths from coronary artery disease, stroke, and diabetes could be cut drastically if people were better at managing their blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood glucose levels, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And there are good medications to control all these conditions; the real problem is that half of all drugs dispensed in the U.S. every year aren’t taken as prescribed. So, take your medicine on schedule. If you or a loved one need some help with that, check out companies like MedMinder that offer automatic pill dispensers. Researchers say increasing medication adherence on a truly large scale will take better coaching by doctors and pharmacists, as well as price breaks for people who can’t afford maintenance medications.

5. Get Rid of Your Gun, or Lock It Away

Having a gun in your home drastically increases the risk that someone in your family will be die in a gun-related accident, suicide, or homicide. The position of the American Academy of Pediatrics is that … Next Page »

Great article. Put it in a car metaphor, maintain your body like you maintain a new car. Don’t wreck it and then try to salvage it.

westwoodwizard

Dumb article because this isn’t about tackling problems like people not taking vaccinations. Vaccinations were major breakthroughs that have already contributed to life extension for those that do not understand by the way all of medicine is about life extension which is why people go to doctors and hospitals in the first place..to get treated for ailments so that they can continue to be healthy and live as long as possible. Google and others want to tack ageing in itself which leads to so many problems.

Google does not need to answer any questions. 40% of the world’s population today would not be alive but for the life extension medical breakthroughs that took place during the late 19th and early 20th century. Did those scientists worry about the fact that we would have 7 billion people today? No..at the end of the day, people have a right to live as long as possible. If not, then answer the question as to whether you have benefited from the medical breakthroughs that took place over the last 150 years? The answer is yes and so your life has been extended beyond what people was not possible two hundred years ago. So if they were committed to extending your life, you should have no objections to doing the same for people either living now or those not yet born.

Reproductive rates are going down in western countries and if healthy life spans increase birth rates will fall over the world anyway as they already have been. Humans have adapted to increasing population already. Nobody in 1850 ever imagined there would be 7 billion people in 2014.

Nobody will force you to get treated for health problems in the future anymore than they can force to do so today. So, if you do not want to take advantage of future advances in healthcare..simple answer..don’t. But, you won’t be making that decision for me in the future anymore than you can today.

Healthcare costs are booming because of age related problems which is what Google wants to tackle. Healthcare costs will not increase if people are healthy…dumb point…